About the Authors

Akemi Morikawa

Affiliations Department of Surgical Oncology, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu, Japan, Department of Frontier Science for Surgical Oncology, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu, Japan

Tamotsu Takeuchi

takeutit08@gmail.com

Affiliation Department of Pathology and Translational Research, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu, Japan

Yusuke Kito

Affiliation Department of Pathology and Translational Research, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu, Japan

Chiemi Saigo

Affiliation Department of Pathology and Translational Research, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu, Japan

Takuji Sakuratani

Affiliation Department of Surgical Oncology, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu, Japan

Manabu Futamura

Affiliations Department of Surgical Oncology, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu, Japan, Department of Breast and Molecular Oncology, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu, Japan

Kazuhiro Yoshida

Affiliation Department of Surgical Oncology, Gifu University Graduate School of Medicine, Gifu, Japan

Competing Interests

One of the authors (Akemi Morikawa) was a member of the Endowed Chair of Gifu University, to which unrestricted research funding will be donated by the commercial company Yakult Honsya Co., Ltd., Tokyo. This does not alter the authors’ adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: TT MF KY. Performed the experiments: AM YK CS TS. Analyzed the data: AM TT. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: AM MF KY. Wrote the paper: AM TT.